


A morning, golden

by Liffis



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Injury Recovery, M/M, Marriage, Massage, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, past career-ending injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 06:56:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13118442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liffis/pseuds/Liffis
Summary: Yann wakes up and his knee is aching fiercely, a painful reminder of what made him end his career.It could be something sad, something that fills him with regret. It isn't. Not when after ending his career has opened his life for so many things he can be openly happy about. Namely: a life with Roman.Or: Roman wins at being a good husband.





	A morning, golden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chocabel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chocabel/gifts).



> Merry Christmas, chocabel!

His knee hurts, even before he so much as just thinks of getting out of bed. 

With a grunt, he rolls back, bumping against Roman. Under his breath, he curses, as he tries to get his leg to bend, even just slightly. No luck, it stays stiff and painful. 

“Knee?”, Roman asks, voice heavy with sleep.

“Yeah”, he just says, sitting up. His thigh is twitching from the pain, but at least he can sit without wincing in pain. Small mercies for physiotherapist successes. 

“Want me to help?”

Yann looks at Roman: his husband is still visibly more asleep than awake. Pillow creases all over his face, beard stubble a mess before his morning shave, and his eyes are still very, very small before he’s had his first cup of coffee.

God help him, but this view makes him forget most of the aches he’s accumulated over the years. At least for some time. And until then it’s so easy to bend over – without jostling his leg -, and kissing him.

“Good morning, lovely.”, Roman murmurs and kisses him again. 

Under Yann’s lips, Roman slowly wakes up, and Yann’s heart still jolts, every time he can make this happen. Like Roman is blooming, in a way, more and more growing from asleep to ready to greet the day.

“Good morning, darling”, he tells him, low and in French, just because he can and because he knows Roman likes that. 

Going by the goosebumps shivering over Roman’s skin, that hasn’t changed.

“God, how did I get so lucky?”, he asks, and his hand cups Yann’s face. 

“How did we get so lucky?”

And there are a million answers to that – it has taken them years upon years to get to this point in life where they can fall asleep together, in their own flat, as husbands, and wake up together, intertwined, and be happy with the lives they have carved for themselves. It was not easy to get here, but they did, and they did it together, and at some point, days like these grew from extraordinary exceptions to everyday happenings, and still. Yann’s heart still feels like bursting when he looks at the man sharing a life with him, and he prays this will never stop.

But when he lies down to keep kissing, maybe turn this into a slow, lazy Sunday morning make-out session, he turns slightly too much, and his knee flares up in sharp pain.

Hissing, he sits up again.

“Want me to get the medication?”

“No, let me try without, first.”

Yann hates taking the medication prescribed for pain flares like these, because he feels heavy and drowsy under their influence, like the world is two steps away from where he actually is, like he’s in two places at once. Common side effect, his doctor has ensured him, nothing to worry, but he still hates it. He wants to be aware of his life, in clear colours, not like – that. 

“Let me help you, Yann. Please.”

Roman is sitting up, moving over, and shoving the pillows and blankets so behind Yann’s back that Yann can lean back. Now he’s sprawled in a half sitting, half lying down position, knee awkwardly bent. It’s not as uncomfortable as he’d expected it to be like. 

But then he sees Roman grabbing the massage oil, and –

“I don’t think sex will make me forget about that.”

And he doesn’t really want to say it, because he knows how much Roman loves a challenge, but: right now he doesn’t think he could get it up. His knee is locked with tension, in such a way that even a twitch threatens to tip him over in pain. It’s not a situation he wants to have sex in.

Roman just twists the cap off and smiles at him.

“While sex solves a lot – and has solved a lot”, he grins and kisses Yann, and that makes his stomach whoop, like missing a step, but in a good way. 

“I’d rather thought of a massage, you know? To loosen the muscles, get them warmed up a bit. Maybe it’ll hurt less when everything is all warm and relaxed?”

Yann thinks about this, for a moment, because while his knee is a tense knot ready to bloom into pain at the smallest touch – undoubtedly, Roman is right. So far, getting his knee to warm up has helped the most, with or without medication.   
So he nods.

Swiftly, Roman sits down, pulling Yann’s leg over his lap – or at least tries to, because Yann hisses, when Roman’s hands grab his thigh.

“This bad?”

But Yann can’t answer, lips pressed together tightly in pain.

“Okay”, Roman just says, “Okay.”

And then he grabs the oil, spreading some over his palms, and then puts his palms – on Yann’s thigh? Yann would’ve expected him to get to the knee immediately. 

But Roman’s fingers start rubbing small circles high up at Yann’s thigh, slow and gentle, in an almost hypnotizing rhythm. It feels good, with the oil, it’s a nice feeling on his skin. Even when Roman is pressing slightly harder, right where the muscles are, it’s really good. And Roman is doing it calmly. Not too much, just so. A harder press, soothed with more gentle rubbing, as if to smoothen it out.

With a quiet sigh, Yann leans back, content to focus on the touches. 

Roman takes a long time to work his thigh. The circles his fingers paint on Yann’s skin are slow, inching downwards in miniscule movements, so slow Yann can really feel his thigh getting loose –

Just until Roman’s fingers brush the kneecap, having Yann tense all over.

“Shhh.”, Roman makes, one of his oiled hands reaching out towards Yann, gently holding Yann’s chin and then he kisses him.

“I promise, I’ll not have it hurt, okay?”, the thumb of his other hand is painting circles on the loose thigh.

So Yann just nods, even though he’s not entirely sure Roman will be able to keep that promise. And Roman sneaks a quick kiss, some of the oil from his hands running down along Yann’s chin. 

But Roman seems to have not enough oil yet and grabs more of it.

The tip of his index finger touches Yann’s kneecap, and then lower, like he is trying to draw oil points on the knee. And with every point, Yann tenses, expecting the pain to flare alive now, or, if it doesn’t, then the next point. But it doesn’t. It throbs, yes, in this deep, bone-aching way, but that’s normal after having had a flare. 

Even when Roman’s finger touch the scars, there’s no pain beyond what is there without any contact. 

Like this way, Roman touches all of Yann’s knee. From the kneecap down to where his shin starts. From the left side to the right. All scarring, even the puckering one. The back down to the start of his calf. 

Yann expects pain, at some point. That by some coincidence or bad luck, Roman’s fingers will find a point that will have Yann hiss with pain. And there are some moments where Roman is this close to it. Moments when Yann can feel it, body tensing with what will hurt, a lot –

But then Roman smoothes the touch into another, something long and drawn-out, like he did with Yann’s thigh, and. And it doesn’t exactly stop hurting, but it’s a kind of hurt Yann can deal with. Not the sharp kind from before.

Roman’s fingers draw patterns and lines, all over his knee, just light touches. Not the massaging from before, and Yann’s not sure he could take that. But this? This feels good.

And he relaxes into the pillows again, only now realizing how tense he’d been. 

“Like this”, Roman murmurs and smiles at him.

Yann just hums.

The pattern is very captivating. Roman starts up above the kneecap, then draws little circles along it, going down. Along the scars, which he touches just faintly and mostly leaves alone. Then: nonsensical patterns next to the scars. Little presses below the other scars, more circles, long lines down. And again. It makes Yann feel slightly drowsy, because he knows when to expect which touch, even when Roman starts varying these patterns. He always starts at the top and works his way down, and then the other way around.

His fingers and palms are very warm, and there’s just enough oil to make them move easily. 

So it’s easy for Yann to relax, lose himself in the touches. The pain has mellowed out into something dull, throbbing – but faint. It’s growing weaker and weaker, like Roman’s gently driving it out. 

And then Roman’s thumb presses right there, between his scars, and before the pain even registers and Yann has sat up, curse on his lips – 

\- it’s gone.

For a second – an almost eternal second – it had felt like his knee consisted of nothing but twisted, aching scar tissue and sharp pain. And Roman’s finger had dug in right there, and it had hurt –

But as soon as it came, it’s over again, and suddenly his knee feels better.

“- what”, he gets out, lifting his leg. 

Except for how wobbly it is due to, well, being relaxed slightly too much – he can move his leg. He’ll never move it as easily as his left one, but that was to be expected after the operations he’s had on his knee. 

And this, this is good. His knee feels warm, and there’s nothing left of the tension, and he – how did Roman do that?

Roman just smiles at him. 

“Secret”, and kisses him, his lips warm against Yann’s.

“You just signed yourself up to be my masseuse forever.”, Yann sighs and moves his leg. 

It feels so miraculous that he can just…move it. Painlessly, beyond the usual faint twinge to it. But he can move it. Can bend it, normally.

“Mmmhm”, Roman makes and kisses a line along Yann’s jaw.

“Truly a terrible situation I got myself into, really, what shall I do?”, he asks, laugh in his voice.

And promptly, sucks a hickey into Yann’s throat, languidly taking his sweet time with it.

“I think there are worse fates than having an excuse to touch my handsome husband regularly.”

The way Roman says ‘husband’ makes Yann’s heart swell several sizes with sheer love, and sometimes, especially in moments like this, he just can’t believe it. That they’re really here, together, married, happy.

He just has to kiss him. Has to. And can kiss him, too, actually. 

So he does. Just like that, he can do it.

“I love you”, he murmurs against his lips, and kisses him again. 

Roman’s oilslick hands tip his chin a bit higher, so their lips will slot together better, and. And in this moment Yann can’t quite believe his luck, how he got to this exact point in his life. 

Like this it is so easy to gently pull Roman down, next to him, so they can keep kissing. He doesn’t want Roman to be in pain, and he knows Roman’s hands and wrists will ache, at one point or another, if he stayed on them for longer.

Together, they lie down and just keep kissing, slow and lazy. They have time. It’s a lovely Sunday morning, and they’re not professional footballers anymore. Their weekends are now spent doing grocery shopping, household chores, and maybe watching the match. Going out with friends. Things like that, mundane things. 

But without any doubt the best thing about not working on the weekends are mornings like this. 

Just staying in bed, close to eachother, their bodies touching under the covers. Legs entangled, Roman’s leg curled over Yann’s hips, because it’s the one position that will keep his hip from aching. Arms around eachother, or at least the hands on the other’s stomach, back, on their side. And kissing. 

Yann will probably never tire of looking at Roman, and he’s still the happiest man on earth that he can call him his husband. Husband! 

“I love you too, Yann.”, Roman says, quietly but with a serious voice. 

His love confessions were never lightly spoken, always – Yann can’t quite name it, but Roman always said it as if he wanted to be sure Yann knew how important it was to Roman. 

The way Roman said it, even after all these years, made something warm bloom under his ribs, right next to his heart, and – 

And when he kissed Roman’s red lips, it was even better.


End file.
